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Pryce, giving emotional evidence from the witness box, told how her then husband had bullied her and said: “I have regretted it ever since”.

She spoke at Southwark crown court of rows and disputes in their marriage even though “I cared for him a lot and I was very much in love”.

They had met in 1987, when she had already had two children by a previous marriage and they were to marry in 1994.

In 1990 she became accidentally pregnant and Huhne, who she describes as “very driven, very ambitious and arrogant”, forced her into a termination.

“I wanted to keep the baby because it was healthy and I quite like babies, that’s why I have had so many,” said the mother of five.

Then with her voice cracking with emotion she went on: “But he was absolutely opposed to it. He said it was bad for our family, bad for his career as it would tie us down. He got me to have an abortion which I have regretted ever since.

“I didn’t want to do it. I have thought about it a lot since but I felt I had absolutely no choice because he was adamant about it.”

She said that Huhne considered few people intellectually superior to him and treated her as inferior.

The Greek-born heiress and respected economist said that she had a “fiery temperament but had learned to compromise in their marriage”.

Pryce has pleaded not guilty to perverting the course of justice by accepting penalty points on her licence after Huhne was caught speeding in March 2003, which would have led to a driving ban which would have damaged his political career.

She said she is innocent on the grounds of marital coercion.

Pryce also told the court that she "had no choice" but to take her husband's speeding points.

She said that in 2003, when his car was clocked speeding, he nominated her as the driver without consulting her, and then pressured her to sign the form saying she was the driver.

He was keen to avoid losing his licence because it would affect his chances of being nominated as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Eastleigh, she said, and had asked her to take the points.

"I knew, of course, immediately that I had not driven the car and, of course, had not incurred the penalty," she said.

"But also I resisted. I had absolutely no wish to take on his points because I knew full well he was a very, very fast driver and very often ignored speed limits and had brought it on himself."

She said they argued for "a number of days" about the issue, but then it "went quiet".

Pryce, wearing a dark skirt and black jacket, said: "A little while later I received an envelope addressed to me which I opened and it looked as if suddenly these points were addressed to me as the person who had been nominated as the driver of that vehicle.

"I exploded," she said, and added that she probably swore, saying: "What is going on?"

"I said 'I am not doing this, I am not signing anything, these are not my points."

After leaving the letter in their hallway, a few days later she said she was called downstairs.

"My husband was standing by the form which actually I had just left and abandoned myself on the table, maybe a couple of days earlier, with a pen in his hand, saying 'You have absolutely got to sign that. If you don't, the implications will be considerable'.

"'It's ridiculous you're not signing it, just sign here'."

Pryce said her name was already filled in and she just had to sign at the bottom.

She told the jury: "I had no choice at the time because he was standing there saying 'This is it, this is the nomination form, you have got to sign this now'.

"I looked at this and realised I had absolutely no choice. I was already nominated.

"It looked like a complete fait accompli for me and for him.

"I had been worn down over a period of time and it looked to me like it was the only thing I could possibly do.

"It didn't look to me like I had any choice at all in the matter so I took this pen and signed, protesting all the time, but I did it."

Earlier the court heard that Huhne's downfall started with a whispered conversation over a quiet lunch.

It ended nearly two years later when the Lib-Dem ex-minister pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice and faces prison.

Political journalist Isabel Oakeshott told the court that she had met Pryce by chance in the queues outside the Lib-Dem conference in Liverpool in September 2010.

Only four months earlier Pryce and Huhne’s marriage had ended in a blaze of press publicity over his affair with press aide Carina Trimingham.

Oakeshott and Pryce met again later and arranged lunch which took place in March 2011, the court heard.

“We talked about the breakdown of her marriage and towards the end of the meal she mentioned to me that she had taken speeding points on behalf of her husband and had been pressurised to do that,” the Political Editor of the Sunday Times told the court.

“That was clearly an interesting and very serious allegation to make against a government minister.

“The conversation over lunch was quite brief and she made that allegation slightly under her breath.

“I had to ask her to say it again as I had not really understood what she had said.

“She didn’t go into any further detail. I remember she said it was in 2003 so clearly a very long time previously.”

Oakeshott said that over the coming months Pryce suggested that “an assistant” had taken Huhne’s speeding points for him but this turned out to be a “red herring”.

At this time Pryce wanted to reveal what she described as Huhne’s “true character” in a book but Oakeshott persuaded her that the story should be published in the Sunday Times.

Pryce was also fearful that if her name was published in connection with the story she could be prosecuted by police. Oakeshott described Pryce as “very, very hurt” and “fragile” over the collapse of her marriage with her moods changing from day to day.

The court has heard that Pryce sent Oakeshott an email confirming how much she wanted to “nail” ex-husband Huhne.